Mongolian Wok on the Carnival Inspiration

I have a confession to make: I went down to Baja via a cruise ship. Yes, I'm a bit embarrassed to be on such a touristy thing, especially on Carnival, of all cruise lines (I took a few with them when I was a kid, and they were tacky, plasticky, and most importantly, not exactly serving food that one could get excited about). But they have this cheap weekend run down to Ensenada, which I figured would be more stress-free than trying to find the bus down to Ensenada from Tijuana, not to mention dealing with the border controls coming back in.

Now, as much as I loved the food in Ensenada, it was a different story while on the boat. Witness the breakfast that I had this morning, with corned beef hash scooped out of what seemed like a high school cafeteria tray with nary a scorch mark in sight, while food around the rest of the ship included lifeless hot dogs, hamburgers, and pizza. Ugh.

But they had one food station that seemed like it might have some promise: this Mongolian Wok stall. Yep - one got to pick out his or her own ingredients and sauces, and they cooked it up for you. They didn't have one of those big circular grills to cook it on though - this was a cruise ship, after all. So as the name of the stall suggests, they used woks, which was a bit odd considering that its concave shape thus kept the fluids inside rather than letting it drain down like the big grill would have done. It came out pretty nasty as a result - by the time I finished this bowl, there was almost a soup still sitting inside. Oh well - ultimately I just needed the boat to give me safe passage down to Ensenada.